Adjacent Words

Relation definitions

	Tweet

Webster's 1828 Dictionary

RELA'TION, n. [L. relatio, refero.]
1. The act of telling; recital; account; narration; narrative of facts; as a historical relation. We listened to the relation of his adventures.
2. Respect; reference; regard.
I have been importuned to make some observations on this art, in relation to its agreement with poetry.
3. Connection between things; mutual respect, or what one thing is with regard to another; as the relation of a citizen to the state; the relation of a subject to the supreme authority; the relation of husband and wife, or of master and servant; the relation of a state of probation to a state of retribution.
4. Kindred; alliance; as the relation of parents and children.
Relations dear, and all the charities of father, son and brother, first were known.
5. A person connected by consanguinity or affinity; a kinsman or kinswoman. He passed a month with his relations in the country.
6. Resemblance of phenomena; analogy.
7. In geometry, ratio; proportion.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: an abstraction belonging to or characteristic of two entities or parts together
2: the act of sexual procreation between a man and a woman; the man's penis is inserted into the woman's vagina and excited until orgasm and ejaculation occur [syn: sexual intercourse, intercourse, sex act, copulation, coitus, coition, sexual congress, congress, sexual relation, relation, carnal knowledge]
3: a person related by blood or marriage; "police are searching for relatives of the deceased"; "he has distant relations back in New Jersey" [syn: relative, relation]
4: an act of narration; "he was the hero according to his own relation"; "his endless recounting of the incident eventually became unbearable" [syn: relation, telling, recounting]
5: (law) the principle that an act done at a later time is deemed by law to have occurred at an earlier time; "his attorney argued for the relation back of the amended complaint to the time the initial complaint was filed" [syn: relation back, relation]
6: (usually plural) mutual dealings or connections among persons or groups; "international relations"

Merriam Webster's

noun Etymology: Middle English relacion, from Anglo-French, from Latin relation-, relatio, from referre (past participle relatus) to carry back Date: 14th century 1. the act of telling or recounting ; account 2. an aspect or quality (as resemblance) that connects two or more things or parts as being or belonging or working together or as being of the same kind <the relation of time and space>; specifically a property (as one expressed by is equal to, is less than, or is the brother of) that holds between an ordered pair of objects 3. the referring by a legal fiction of an act to a prior date as the time of its taking effect — usually used with back 4. a. (1) a person connected by consanguinity or affinity ; relative (2) a person legally entitled to a share of the property of an intestate b. relationship by consanguinity or affinity ; kinship 5. reference, respect <in relation to> 6. the attitude or stance which two or more persons or groups assume toward one another <race relations> 7. a. the state of being mutually or reciprocally interested (as in social or commercial matters) b. plural (1) dealings, intercourse <foreign relations> (2) sexual intercourse

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 a what one person or thing has to do with another. b the way in which one person stands or is related to another. c the existence or effect of a connection, correspondence, contrast, or feeling prevailing between persons or things, esp. when qualified in some way (bears no relation to the facts; enjoyed good relations for many years). 2 a relative; a kinsman or kinswoman. 3 (in pl.) a (foll. by with) dealings (with others). b sexual intercourse. 4 = RELATIONSHIP. 5 a narration (his relation of the events). b a narrative. 6 Law the laying of information. Phrases and idioms: in relation to as regards. Etymology: ME f. OF relation or L relatio (as RELATE)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Relation Re*la"tion (r?-l?"sh?n), n. [F. relation, L. relatio. See Relate.] 1. The act of relating or telling; also, that which is related; recital; account; narration; narrative; as, the relation of historical events. ??????oet's relation doth well figure them. --Bacon. 2. The state of being related or of referring; what is apprehended as appertaining to a being or quality, by considering it in its bearing upon something else; relative quality or condition; the being such and such with regard or respect to some other thing; connection; as, the relation of experience to knowledge; the relation of master to servant. Any sort of connection which is perceived or imagined between two or more things, or any comparison which is made by the mind, is a relation. --I. Taylor. 3. Reference; respect; regard. I have been importuned to make some observations on this art in relation to its agreement with poetry. --Dryden. 4. Connection by consanguinity or affinity; kinship; relationship; as, the relation of parents and children. Relations dear, and all the charities Of father, son, and brother, first were known. --Milton. 5. A person connected by cosanguinity or affinity; a relative; a kinsman or kinswoman. For me . . . my relation does not care a rush. --Ld. Lytton. 6. (Law) (a) The carrying back, and giving effect or operation to, an act or proceeding frrom some previous date or time, by a sort of fiction, as if it had happened or begun at that time. In such case the act is said to take effect by relation. (b) The act of a relator at whose instance a suit is begun. --Wharton. Burrill. Syn: Recital; rehearsal; narration; account; narrative; tale; detail; description; kindred; kinship; consanguinity; affinity; kinsman; kinswoman.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(relations) Frequency: The word is one of the 1500 most common words in English. 1. Relations between people, groups, or countries are contacts between them and the way in which they behave towards each other. Greece has established full diplomatic relations with Israel... N-COUNT: usu pl see also industrial relations, public relations, race relations 2. If you talk about the relation of one thing to another, you are talking about the ways in which they are connected. It is a question of the relation of ethics to economics. N-COUNT: usu sing, usu N of/to/between n 3. Your relations are the members of your family. ...visits to friends and relations... = relative N-COUNT see also poor relation 4. You can talk about something in relation to something else when you want to compare the size, condition, or position of the two things. The money he'd been ordered to pay was minimal in relation to his salary. PREP-PHRASE 5. If something is said or done in relation to a subject, it is said or done in connection with that subject. ...a question which has been asked many times in relation to Irish affairs... PREP-PHRASE

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Recital, narration, narrative, account, statement, story, history, chronicle, tale, description, detail, report, rehearsal. 2. Connection, relationship, dependency, bearing. 3. Reference, respect, regard. 4. Connection, relative position. 5. Relationship, kindred, family tie, connection, kinship, affinity, consanguinity. 6. Kinsman, relative, connection.

Moby Thesaurus

about, absorption, affective meaning, affiliation, agnation, allegory, alliance, analogy, ancestry, anent, apropos, association, associations, balancing, bearing, blood, blood relationship, blood relative, brotherhood, brothership, capacity, carnal knowledge, character, cognation, coitus, coloring, common ancestry, common descent, comparative anatomy, comparative degree, comparative grammar, comparative judgment, comparative linguistics, comparative literature, comparative method, compare, comparing, comparison, concerning, condition, confrontation, confrontment, connection, connotation, consanguinity, consequence, contrast, contrastiveness, correlation, correspondence, cousinhood, cousinship, criminal conversation, dealings, delineation, denotation, description, distinction, distinctiveness, doings, drift, effect, embarrassment, enation, engagement, enmeshment, entanglement, essence, extension, fatherhood, filiation, force, fraternity, gist, grammatical meaning, idea, impact, implication, import, in relation to, inclusion, intension, interconnection, intercourse, interdependence, involution, involvement, kin, kindred, kinship, kinsman, kinswoman, lexical meaning, liaison, likening, link, links, literal meaning, matching, maternity, matrilineage, matriliny, matrisib, matrocliny, meaning, metaphor, motherhood, narration, narrative, opposing, opposition, overtone, parallelism, part, paternity, patrilineage, patriliny, patrisib, patrocliny, pertaining to, pertinence, pith, point, portrayal, position, practical consequence, propinquity, proportion, purport, quality, range of meaning, re, real meaning, recapitulation, recital, recitation, recountal, recounting, reference, referent, referring to, regarding, rehearsal, relations, relationship, relative, relevance, report, respecting, retelling, review, role, scope, semantic cluster, semantic field, sense, sex, sexual intercourse, sibship, significance, signification, significatum, signifie, simile, similitude, sisterhood, sistership, span of meaning, spirit, status, story, structural meaning, substance, sum, sum and substance, symbolic meaning, tale-telling, telling, tenor, tie, tie-in, ties of blood, totality of associations, transferred meaning, trope of comparison, truck, unadorned meaning, undertone, value, weighing, with regard to, with respect to, yarn spinning